Tim Blair

Tim Blair
–,
Thursday,
August,
30,
2012,(4:25pm)

To recap. I’d just filed last week’s column on cycling. It was a nice day, and I took a ride up the bike path to Rushcutters Bay. After three major whole-path blockages I said, to truck driver No.3, “nice place to park”. No abuse. No anger. Just that.

According to Farrelly’s own account, the driver’s response was a mild: “I can’t stop the traffic.” No abuse. No anger. (Incidentally, the first of those three catastrophic “whole-path blockages” was caused by bicycle police. Her target would be more accurately described as “truck driver No.2”.)

[The driver] became immediately aggressive, insisting on his right to block the lane (but not the road) and dissing bike lane-loving lord mayor Clover Moore for being “an educated woman”.

Again, check the record. The driver’s initial reaction was explanatory. Oh, and he also happened to be carrying a mattress at the time, which somewhat inhibits conversational range.

As he stalked off …

Right. With a mattress on his shoulder.

… I took a couple of pics of his unmarked truck and posted them on my blog.

In fact, Farrelly posted three shots. The first showed the truck. The second revealed the truck’s registration, as did the third, which came with the additional information that “delivery papers in the front showed it was from Domayne Bedding in Alexandria”.

I was a bit miffed, but not angry. Had no desire he be fined. (As if.)

Please, Elizabeth. What was the purpose of running those shots unless to cause the driver problems with parking officials or his employer? What was the purpose of this?

My point was simple: why does everyone seem to think it’s OK to block bikes but not cars?

Elizabeth barely made that point.

Anyway, all hell broke loose. By breakfast, my humdrum little blog had 50 comments and a thousand hits. By day’s end, almost 4000.

Her “humdrum little blog” is promoted by the SMH, where a mere 4000 hits in a day is “all hell” breaking loose.

I was called a pompous prat, a rude and viscious (sic) idiot, an incredibly stupid woman, a small sad person, a pompous git, an old commie bat, an absolute wanker, a poor little suffering Doctor princess pet, a moron, an imbecile, a pestiferous little idiot, a selfish fool, an arrogant conceited woman, an old tart, an old fart, a dolt, lord of the bicycle paths, a wowser, pathetic, despicable, weak, dishonest and a complete f---wit.

Note the spelling criticism, from someone whose initial post featured the line: “Oly in Australia.”

“That people can anonymously abuse someone in public is not freedom of expression,” said author and essayist John Ralston Saul during a conversation last week with members of Sydney PEN. “It’s slander. It’s not taking responsibility for your views. It’s not citizenship.”

I wonder if Farrelly told that truck driver who she was while arguing with him and taking photographs.

[Saul’s] critique of cyberspace’s role in “the rise of secrecy as an acceptable way of grabbing power” resonated strongly with me, especially considering my experiences in the digital hatesphere.

There’s a bus you see round town that bears, in similar vein, a quote from Peter Cundall: “The greatest power that ordinary people have … is to tell the truth.”

Like, for example, telling the truth about certain photographs.

Democracy takes it on trust that people, fully fed and free, will act with intelligence and decency. What if that’s wrong?

Judging by Elizabeth’s antics, it is wrong. Having sought to victimise a truck driver for simply doing his job, Farrelly now builds towards a self-pity plea:

I’d always resisted blogging. It swallows time and, well, why give away something for which you should be paid?

Should be paid? Really?

But as the world’s newspapers started to look like an endangered species, it struck me that an ironic effect of the internet might be to reinstate a feudal condition, where the social narrative is owned by those who need no payment; the rich, the maddened and the agenda-driven.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

So blogging became a kind of experiment. I knew failure was on the cards. Humiliation even. But I did not expect to feel endangered myself.

Nobody is posting shots of your car, Liz, or confronting you in the street. As a truck driver might put it: “Furniture delivery became a kind of experiment. I knew failure was on the cards. Humiliation even. But I did not expect to feel endangered myself.”

Now I am hourly reminded that experimental knowledge is sometimes so dark and loathsome we’d sooner be without.

Oh. My. Lord.

And it’s not all anonymous. Of the mob pursuing me, some used government or university or work email addresses. Some - including their apparent puppetmaster Tim Blair - gave names.

Puppetmaster? Fair enough. But – here’s a clue, Elizabeth – it isn’t the readers being made to dance here.

I don’t read the Tele.

She’s a senior columnist in a two-newspaper city – and she doesn’t read the most popular of those two. No wonder she’s unfamiliar with Merrylands ("where?").

I’d never heard of Blair. Turns out he blog-blags me so often it looks like attention-seeking …

Of the 7710 posts at this site, only 24 mention Farrelly (some of them positively). She’s running at about 0.3 per cent of total content.

Some of Blair’s blogs use more of my words than his. I’m considering sending a bill.

Deliver it in a truck. I’ll get the camera.

And so he blogged on, relentlessly. Thursday, Saturday, Monday; clearly enjoying the rabble. He might not be responsible for his nut-job devotees, but he carefully fed them their ideas and terminology.

Who fed “nut-job” to Farrelly? C’mon, people. Own up.

He helpfully posted links to my blog and CV, even requoting some of the comments from my site, where I was derided as a communist, a Green, a hypocrite and a tory; as rich, powerful, supercilious, menopausal, adolescent, a Green ‘’self-annointed [sic] member of the ruling class’’ …

There’s that spelling snobbery again. Oly from Elizabeth.

It was a lynch mob; bike-hating, city-hating, education-hating. Wound up by Blair, they rode a tide of anger, envy and sexism.

Beats riding a bike.

It wasn’t just criticism. A personal blog is personal. The comments come to your email. These people were in my living room, spraying hot pus.

Tim Blair
–,
Thursday,
August,
30,
2012,(5:42am)

Two days ago, Treasurer Wayne Swan warned of the funding cuts that awaited Australians under a cruel Newman-like conservative federal government:

“It is very clear that Mr Abbott is now conspiring with the premier of Queensland to cut jobs and services, particularly in health and education in Queensland,” Mr Swan told reporters in Sydney on Tuesday.

The treasurer said the federal coalition had a “crater” in its budget costings that needed to be filled.

Thousands of federal grants promised to groups ranging from community bodies to universities are at risk as the government’s razor gang seeks billions of dollars in budget savings to offset the sharp downturn in revenue.

The Australian has learned that the Gillard government has imposed an across-the-board clamp on an estimated $2 billion a year in federal grants after cabinet this week received its latest updates on the budget position.

Tim Blair
–,
Thursday,
August,
30,
2012,(5:22am)

Does it actually matter how Osama bin Laden was killed? Most normal people would be just as pleased if he’d bought it while feeding Schmackos to labrador puppies as they would be if he’d been gunned down in the act of triggering a 300-kilogram nuclear Koran. That small matter aside, Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette’s firsthand account of the raid that binned Binny contains some intriguing material:

Bissonnette writes that none of the SEALs were fans of President Barack Obama and knew that his administration would take credit for ordering the raid. One of the SEALs said after the mission that they had just gotten Obama re-elected by carrying out the raid.

But he says they respected him as commander in chief and for giving the operation the go-ahead.

Bissonnette writes less flatteringly of meeting Vice President Joe Biden along with Obama at the headquarters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment after the raid. He says Biden told “lame jokes” no one understood, reminding him of “someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner.”

At least someone was drinking. Obama apparently invited bin Laden’s perforators for a beer, but the call never arrived.

Tim Blair
–,
Thursday,
August,
30,
2012,(5:16am)

Grand Island Public School District in Nebraska, whose slogan is “Every Student, Every Day”, is trying to force a deaf 3 year old preschooler to change his name because it violates their “Weapons in Schools” policy that bans “any instrument … that looks like a weapon”.

Tim Blair
–,
Wednesday,
August,
29,
2012,(7:09pm)

Tim Blair
–,
Wednesday,
August,
29,
2012,(1:30pm)

Case #1: A News Ltd writer mistakenly criticises The Age for a piece that turns out to be from AAP. Alerted to the error, he subsequently posts:

CORRECTION: The copy was written by AAP. Apologies to The Age.

Case #2: A Crikey writer mistakenly criticises News.com.au for a piece that turns out to be from AAP. Alerted to the error, he subsequently posts … 426 words of desperate evasion and subject dodging, followed by 74 words, then 175 words, an additional 174 words, another 32 words, and a further 102 words, all without once using the word “correction”.

Tim Blair
–,
Wednesday,
August,
29,
2012,(1:25pm)

At the 1975 cricket World Cup, Sri Lanka faced Australia – and a rampaging Jeff Thomson – for the first time in an official one-day match:

Sunil Wettimuny and Duleep Mendis were repeatedly struck on the body, with Thomson, steaming in from the Pavilion End, causing the most damage. Both batsmen were hit, but Mendis was laid out by a ball Alan Gibson in the Times described as “not a bouncer but a short ball aimed at the body”.

“I hit this bloke on the head,” Thomson explained. “They were only little fellas so you couldn’t call it a bouncer exactly.”

Just 21 years after that bloody debut, Sri Lanka won the World Cup. Now Afghanistan has faced Australia for the first time, and again a NSW-born fast bowler proved problematic, as cricinfo’s match call reveals:

Starc to Karim Sadiq, no run, struck on the helmet, dropped it short and it nipped back in, was too late to react there, tried to duck but in vain, got him hard on the helmet, Starc immediately asks him if he’s doing fine and he is …

Starc to Karim Sadiq, 1 run, fierce bowling from Starc, tries to fend that one away, short ball, sharp and it nips back in, comes off the glove and then the helmet, goes towards fine leg …

Those two blows to the helmet had an effect, was expecting a short one again, this one was shortish but not a bouncer by any means, he moved away a little there …

Give them just a couple of decades. Meanwhile, Mitchell Starc claimed five wickets in Australia’s low-scoring overnight win against Pakistan.

The Israeli Defence Force has been absolved of responsibility in the death of an American peace activist, who was crushed to death by a military bulldozer in 2003.

Judge Oded Gershon in Haifa District Court in Israel’s north, ruling on the civil case brought by Rachel Corrie’s family, said the 23-year-old activist could have saved herself by moving out of the path of the military bulldozer.

“There was no negligence by the army or the state [of Israel],” he said.

And that’s it for direct quotes from the judge, who according to other sources had a few lines worth noting:

“She did not distance herself from the area, as any thinking person would have done,” he told a packed courtroom … Judge Oded Gershon, presiding at the Haifa District Court, said Ms Corrie had been protecting terrorists in a designated combat zone.

Tim Blair
–,
Tuesday,
August,
28,
2012,(5:47pm)

A senior union official who is suing Opposition leader Tony Abbott for allegedly implying he is a union thug deliberately drove his car at a building site manager following a violent protest in Melbourne this morning, a court has heard.